# Outbreak Watch — WHO Disease Outbreak Alerts (`0xgollum/outbreak-watch`) Actor

Watch WHO's official Disease Outbreak News feed and get alerted the moment a new international outbreak (Ebola, cholera, mpox, avian flu...) is published - optionally filtered to diseases, countries, or regions you care about. Only new alerts are reported after the first baseline check.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/0xgollum/outbreak-watch.md
- **Developed by:** [0xGollum](https://apify.com/0xgollum) (community)
- **Categories:** News, Automation
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$20.00 / 1,000 new outbreak alerts

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/platform/actors/running/actors-in-store#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Outbreak Watch — WHO Disease Outbreak Alerts

Watch WHO's official Disease Outbreak News feed and get alerted the moment a new
internationally-significant outbreak is published — Ebola, cholera, mpox, avian flu, and more.
Run on a schedule; only outbreaks new since the last check are reported, never the full current
list dumped as "alerts" on the very first run.

### How it works

Consumes the free, no-auth public REST API of the [World Health Organization](https://www.who.int)
(`who.int/api/news/diseaseoutbreaknews`) — the same official feed WHO itself publishes new
Disease Outbreak News items to. Verified live before building: returns real current entries
(e.g. the Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

Checked against Apify Store before building (08/08/2026): existing competitors in this space
scrape WHO/CDC/ECDC/PAHO but do a one-time full dump each run — none do scheduled
diff-based alerting (only what's new since the last check), which is the angle this actor
covers.

### Input

- **Filter keywords** (optional) — disease names, countries, or regions (e.g. `Ebola`,
  `Democratic Republic of the Congo`). Case-insensitive substring match against the outbreak
  title and summary. Leave empty to get every new outbreak, unfiltered.
- **Request timeout**.

### Output

Built for someone who wants the numbers, not the article — one row per newly published
outbreak matching your filter, with the figures pulled out of WHO's write-up for you:
`disease`, `location`, `total_cases`, `total_deaths`, `new_cases_since_last_report`,
`new_deaths_since_last_report`, `matched_keyword`, `published`, `summary`, `url`,
`checked_at`. The day-over-day deltas (`new_cases_since_last_report` /
`new_deaths_since_last_report`) are computed by comparing each new report for a disease
against the last figures seen for that same disease — that's how you see the evolution over
time, not just a single snapshot.

### Known constraints

- WHO Disease Outbreak News covers outbreaks of **international** public health significance.
  Purely domestic events (e.g. a localized measles cluster with no cross-border spread) are
  typically not covered here — that's CDC/ECDC territory, out of scope for this version.
- `total_cases`/`total_deaths` are extracted from WHO's free-text write-up (regex, tuned and
  tested against 6 real reports across different diseases before shipping) — not every report
  is worded the same way. Single-case narratives and broad regional overviews (checked live:
  Nipah, Yellow Fever) often don't state one clean "X confirmed cases" figure, so these fields
  come back empty on those — the `summary` field is always filled in as a fallback either way.
- First-ever check establishes a silent baseline (no rows) rather than dumping every
  currently-active outbreak as if it just happened — alerts start from the second run onward.
  Day-over-day deltas also only start appearing once a disease has been seen at least twice.

# Actor input Schema

## `keywords` (type: `array`):

Disease names, countries, or regions to filter on (e.g. "Ebola", "Democratic Republic of the Congo"). Case-insensitive substring match against the outbreak title and summary. Leave empty to get every new outbreak, unfiltered.

## `request_timeout_secs` (type: `integer`):

HTTP request timeout.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "keywords": [],
  "request_timeout_secs": 20
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {
    "keywords": []
};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("0xgollum/outbreak-watch").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = { "keywords": [] }

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("0xgollum/outbreak-watch").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print("💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/" + run["defaultDatasetId"])
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{
  "keywords": []
}' |
apify call 0xgollum/outbreak-watch --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "mcp-remote",
                "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=0xgollum/outbreak-watch",
                "--header",
                "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
            ]
        }
    }
}

```

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/eY9bRt3xPYnsY32rj/builds/8iX42YJibPTRnllfn/openapi.json